The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins, 1868) is a long novel. It’s really long. It took me a month of on-and-off reading to finish. Okay, I’ve messed up the introduction, let’s try that again:

The Moonstone is a mystery novel widely considered (read: T.S. Elliot says so on the back of my copy) to one of the ur-modern mystery novels. It tells the story of the theft of an ancient Indian diamond–the titular Moonstone–and the efforts by several different parties to get it back, including the original guardians of the gem and the diamond’s current ‘owners’. Continue reading →